Category Archives: Adoption stories

A few years back, Janet Paluck submitted a happy tail to Petfinder about her dog Yogi, whom she had had for three years. In it, she recounted how her long-time Jack Russell Terrier, Sparky, had died and how at first she didn’t want to get another dog. But then she …

One Saturday, Tommy and his fiancé Peter went to walk dogs at Sean Casey Animal Rescue in Brooklyn, NY. “Just for fun and definitely not to adopt a dog,” Tommy told us. The second they locked eyes with Dabbs, they knew they had to bring her home. “It was an …

The scruffy gray dog was at the South L.A. Animal Shelter when Elissa and Nick Andre saw his listing on Petfinder. They weren’t yet married but wanted to adopt a dog together and had been searching the website and visiting shelters in a 25-mile radius of Los Angeles. “It felt …

Rachael Moore wanted a dog but she wasn’t sure she was ready for the commitment. Her solution? Fostering. “It was a win win,” she says. She volunteered to foster for Happy Tales Humane, which posts its pets on Petfinder. “The first foster dog I had was Buck. He was an …

Alex had wanted a dog for longer than she and Brad had been dating. “It was an item on her bucket list,” Brad says. But the time never seemed right. They lived very busy lives, first in Chicago, then in Madison, Wisconsin. Their move to Omaha didn’t help because they …

Terri Kandis calls Foxy the neighborhood ambassador. On their walks, the 5-year-old Yorkshire Terrier mix is an equal-opportunity greeter. “She loves to meet any two or four-legged friend,” Terri says. “Her whole body wags, and she wants to give kisses. I have not found one person who doesn’t want to …

The sorrow over losing two dogs within a few months of each other was so overwhelming that Julie Stafslien couldn’t imagine finding a place in her heart for another dog. Ever since she was a child, though, there had always been a canine family member, so it didn’t seem right …

It’s the dogs’ dinnertime at Amy and Shaun Jones’s in Seattle. Seven-year-old Fudgems, whom the couple has had since she was a puppy, wants her food now, so she barks at 10-year-old Samson, encouraging him to bark, while she warbles encouragement. He’s a vocal dog, and barks when he’s excited, …

Twix was kind of a mystery. The Pates thought she was a terrier, but her legs just kept getting longer and longer, and people started asking if she was an Italian Greyhound. “We didn’t know a lot about the breed,” Melissa Pate says, “but as we researched we saw that …

Julianna Murphy adopted Dakota, a Belgian Shepherd/Golden Retriever mix, from Guelph Humane Society in Ontario. The dog had been picked up as a stray. He was thin, and his coat was matted. But sometimes someone just knows this is the one. “Dakota won my heart,” Julianna says, “and I could …